The issue of land was an extremely sensitive and emotive issue and it became only a question of time before the chiefs, the paramount chiefs and kings in both Matabeleland and Mashonaland were forced to rise up in arms against European settlers, writes Dr Felix Muchemwa in his book The Struggle For Land in Zimbabwe (1890 – 2010) that The Patriot is serialising.

THE immediate result of the mass desertion of the districts by African youths was that from 1895, the demand for labour completely outstripped supply. (Palmer, 1977: p.43)
Affected European settlers, demanding special types of ‘forced’ labour, were soon recommended to apply for ‘Shangans’ from Native Commissioner Dunbar Moodie of the Melsetter District.
The ‘bully’ of Melsetter (Dunbar Moodie) had completely turned those native Africans (‘Shangans’) into ‘slaves’.
The ‘Shangans’ alternative was, therefore, one which many affected European settlers took.
In his report on the ‘Native Disturbances of 1896’, Sir Richard Martin, the first Resident High Commissioner to Rhodesia, was to describe ‘forced’ labour by the native commissioners, native police and mounted police as being ‘synonymous with slavery.’ (Willis,1985)
There is evidence that some of the assistant native commissioners routinely raped Ndebele women, both single and married. (Stigger,1976:p.55)
By January 1896, life in the ‘locations’ had reached intolerable levels for all classes of people in Matabeleland and, it was Rhodes who had strongly advocated the ‘locations’ project.
Way back in September 1894, before the Land Commission’s final report, Rhodes had advised that “Africans were to be expected to settle on European farms.
“There was to be no disturbance of Europeans.
“Land was only to be set aside for Africans unwilling to come to terms with Europeans.
“Such land was to be set aside at the extreme edges of the territory.” (Matabeleland News and Mini Record, September 11 1894)
While to many Africans, Rhodes’s statements were just a veiled threat to evict them from their ancestral land and throw them into the abyss of the tsetse-infested Gwai and Shangani Native Reserves, for those Africans who knew the ‘locations’ system in the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, the statement was an endorsement of an internal type of slavery on the African continent. However, on the ground, the majority of the Ndebele people continued to cultivate and occupy land previously allocated to them by their chiefs.
But the situation was far from good for them.
The new order totally contravened the African land tenure system in which all land belonged to Mwari/Mlimo and the African ancestral spirits of various chiefs and their people.
Ndebele chiefs, indunas and headmen found that they had lost their power to allocate land to their people. (Rhodesia, July 9 1898)
Between December 1893 and September 1894, it was Colenbrander who reduced the sizes of their villages to create ‘locations’ on usurped land that became European settler-farms. (Stigger,1976:p.45)
And, in the process, African ritual rights on the land and the spiritual shrines (including ancestral grave sites) were callously violated by European settler farmers and miners.
The land inside the ‘locations’ became private property, subject to willing-buyer-willing-seller conditions for change of tenure.
The Ndebele were required to pay ‘rent’ in the form of labour on the white farms. They were overcrowded and subjected to constant threats of eviction by the European settler farmers as a constant reminder that the land they were living on was no longer their own.
Consequently, many soon realised that it was far better to live in the Native Reserves where there were no threats of eviction every year for failure to pay the ‘rent.’ (BSAC Directors’ Report,1894-1895)
The new order amounted to a definite provocation of the spirit mediums and high priests who were the spiritual custodians of land in Matabeleland and Mashonaland. (Bhebhe,1979)
The high priests at Njelele, Matonjeni, Mangwe and Ntabazikamambo became outraged and the outrage reverberated not only to all corners of Matabeleland, but also to all corners of Mashonaland starting with the Charter District, through the High Priest Mkwati at Ntabazikamambo in Inyati.
The issue of land was, therefore, an extremely sensitive and emotive issue and it became only a question of time before the chiefs, the paramount chiefs and kings in both Matabeleland and Mashonaland were forced to rise up in arms against European settlers.
The First Chimurenga was inevitable. (Ranger, 1967)
The idea of a taxation system on Africans was initially mooted by Rhodes in 1892, in Mashonaland.
At the time, he believed some form of taxation on Africans would, ‘to a certain extent furnish an incentive to labour’ because the majority of African males in Mashonaland would not be able to afford the money for such a tax.
The tax was, therefore, intended to get those Africans without tax money to work on European farms and mines to earn it.
However, the British government disapproved of such taxation, describing it as, ‘a charge for the occupation of their lands’, and that it would arouse: ‘great antagonism on the part of the natives’.
But, it was still enforced, starting with Mashonaland in 1894, months before it was legalised. (Palmer,1977:p.43)
The tax, levied on all adult African males was coined the ‘Hut Tax’.
This was because after the victims deserted their villages for days, weeks or even months on end to avoid BSAC tax collectors, the tax collectors found no other way of accounting for the African males living in the villages except by counting the deserted huts.
When ‘Hut Tax’ was introduced, it was 10 shillings and European settlers and collectors favoured the collection in the form of cattle, goats and sheep or labour usually of two months’ duration (Palmer,1977: pp.43-4) or in the form of gold. Collected in stock, the tax became a means to start farms in Mashonaland, to the extent that by the end of 1895 cattle had become so scarce in some parts of Mashonaland that the BSAC decided to suspend such collections for three months, ‘and that thereafter it (the tax) should not be levied in the form of stock – in view of the fact that at this rate there would be no cattle left to collect in a year or two’. (Phimister,1988: p.16)
In Matabeleland, where the Matabeleland Stock Farm Vote Fund formed the BSAC’s only revenue fund, the ‘Hut tax’ was introduced rather too late, just before the First Chimurenga in 1896.
It was, however, enforced with military zeal and precision.